Podcast Q&A 6: Is there a water softener that will remove rotten egg smell as well as soften the water?

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Hello again, welcome to the Clean Water Made Easy Podcast Question and Answer Episode 6.

Hello, my name is Gerry Bulfin, and I’m a WQA-Certified Master Water Specialist and Water Treatment Contractor here in Santa Cruz, California.

I host a weekly podcast where I delve deeper into various types of water problems, well water treatment systems, and water quality issues on a weekly basis.

I also produce these quick Q&A episodes, where we answer common questions people ask us. Hopefully, it’s helpful to others to hear about it. We receive a lot of phone calls, emails, and chats every day, so try to pick one that’s interesting and appeals to a wider audience.

Can I Remove Rotten Egg Smell with a Water Softener?

Today Bernie emailed us and asked us:

“Is there a water softener that will remove rotten egg smell as well as soften the water? Our well water is hard, but we also have a problem with odor, and a local outfit recommended a combination water softener and carbon filter that they say will solve the problem.”

Thanks for emailing us, Bernie.

Okay, well, generally we wouldn’t recommend that. There are water softeners that contain activated carbon, but while the softener resin lasts for many years, the carbon typically wears out within a year or two.

If you’re on city water and are looking for chlorine removal, consider getting a filter that lasts a year or two before it stops removing the chlorine; then, you would need to take it apart and dispose of it.

There are some techniques for doing it, but regardless, whether you have city water or well water, you might not even get a week out of it, or a couple of weeks at most. Generally, that’s been our experience. We generally do not recommend a carbon filter by itself. Even if you have a whole tank of carbon, we wouldn’t recommend just the carbon filter to remove the rotten egg smell.

For one thing, carbon can breed bacteria, and your well water may not pose a significant health threat. In other words, the well may not have coliform in it or bacteria in it, but there’s always a background of some bacteria, and you can get these bacteria breeding in the carbon and create slime and odors themselves.

It is better to use a softener to soften the water and then have a separate system to remove the rotten egg odor, such as an Air Charger Sulfur Filter or an Aeration Tank.

There are standalone aeration carbon tanks that aerate the water, and then they backwash; this can work well. Although you would still want to sanitize it several times a year with chlorine or peroxide. However, the most effective approach is to use a chlorinator, inject chlorine bleach, and then follow up with a carbon filter to remove the chlorine. That way, you have disinfected clean water at that point, and then after the carbon filter, you run it through the water softener and into the house.

There are also other ways to achieve this, such as ozone treatment and various types of aeration systems. However, to answer your basic question, Bernie, you simply don’t want a combination softener and carbon filter. I wouldn’t want one even on city water, but they will work on chlorinated city water, so you get soft, chlorine-free water, but like I said, not for very long

If you can do it, you’re better off having a softener tank and a separate carbon tank. If you have a whole tank of carbon, you could get years out of it, and then when you dump it out, you’re just changing the carbon.

You don’t have to mess with the resin and the water softener, which is separate, so again, you’re better off using an aeration system with catalytic carbon or a chlorination system and then carbon.

Please give us a call, and we can discuss this further with you. Alternatively, you can also chat with us through our live chat on our website. You can email me directly at gerrybulfin@cleanwaterstore.com if you'd like.

Okay, I hope that was helpful to you. If you have any questions, please keep us in mind and give us a holler. Thanks.

Gerry Bulfin

gerrybulfin@cleanwaterstore.com